having just opened this weekend, McGinley's new exhibition titled 'Moonmilk' was for me an arresting series of works. the exhibition, referencing the "white, cheese-like substance found inside caves", places naked bodies in subterranean settings to remarkable effect.
Blue Breakdown
182.9 x 274.3 cms
the photographs are arranged in two rooms in the gallery - one larger main room and a smaller one to the side - and the physical scale of the prints relative to the room and to each other reinforces the relative scale of the human element and surreal surroundings in the photographs. ranging from the spectacular to the intimate, we move from the 'Blue Breakdown' print covering half a wall to the book-sized 'Coco & India (Cascade)', travelling from the human speck in the former to the pair of girl-sized girls sitting in the centre of the frame. that, for me, was the strength of Moonmilk: not only the otherworldly backdrop, cast further out by the extraordinary lighting, but the constant human presence in it. at times dwarfed, and other times brought to the fore, but always placing the subterranean world in perspective.
Coco & India (Cascade)
25.4 x 17.8cms
('Moonmilk' is showing until 8 Oct 2009 at the Alison Jacques Gallery)
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